


Desperate Measures

by SectoBoss



Category: Stand Still Stay Silent
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 19:55:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3908590
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SectoBoss/pseuds/SectoBoss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Left behind in the cat-tank, Tuuri and Reynir unexpectedly come face-to-face with one of the creatures of the Silent World. Surely a ravenous troll is more than a match for a frightened young skald?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Desperate Measures

_Another day, another dollar_ , Tuuri thought to herself, slumped across the tank’s steering wheel.

It was some old world expression she’d found in one of the books they had salvaged. She had no idea what a ‘dollar’ was, but it sounded kind of cool and it seemed to perfectly sum up her life right now.

She sighed and gazed listlessly out through the windscreen. In front of her, Copenhagen was washed grey by clouds and a light drizzle that had been hissing through the air since early morning. It was that annoying sort of rain that you almost didn’t notice at first, not until it had suddenly managed to soak you to the skin and drench your hair. It had settled gently across the windscreen, speckling it with a thousand little jewels of water that reflected and twisted the light through them in odd ways.

They had been parked here for a few hours now, at the entrance to a side-street that opened out onto a square. The far side of the square, across the cracked and splintered tarmac and beyond the rows of decaying cars, was dominated by the building they were interested in. An old library or museum, built into a huge and ornate stone edifice that was slowly sagging and crumbling under its own weight and almost a century of neglect. Lalli had scouted the place the night before and reported back that the place was miraculously free of trolls, so at first light they had set off to see what they could find. Sigrun and Emil had reconnoitred the building and come back with huge grins, babbling almost incoherently about maze-like corridors leading to shelves and shelves of books sealed in plastic, along with all sorts of other curios and oddities still nestled in glass cases and laid on display under long-dead spotlights. Tuuri would have given the known world to be allowed to have a look around, but as always her place was cooped up in the tank as the others set up a relay system – Sigrun, Emil and Lalli carrying out as much as they could to the front door and Mikkel dragging the massive piles across the square and packing them into the tank’s cargo hold.

At least this time she had someone to talk to.

Reynir sat next to her in the tank’s front passenger seat, toying idly with the end of his braid and pausing every now and then to readjust the strap on his haz-mask. They’d been chatting idly for the last hour or two about their respective lives, although neither of them had anything really interesting to tell the other. Tuuri had spent the last eleven years behind a desk and Reynir had lived his whole life in the middle of nowhere, so good stories were few and far between. It hadn’t taken too long for both of them to expend their entire repertoire and fall into an awkward silence.

“Do you think he’ll be back soon?” Reynir asked, as much to break the silence as anything else.

Not long ago Sigrun had emerged from the murk of the building’s entrance and had an animated conversation with Mikkel, who had been stood on watch next to the building’s huge wooden doors when he wasn’t hauling books. Tuuri and Reynir hadn’t been able to hear any of the conversation from across the square, but it had involved a lot of gesticulation from Sigrun and a lot of folded arms and head-shaking from Mikkel. Eventually Mikkel had marched across the square and told the two in the tank that he needed to go inside the building to help the other three shift some wreckage. He clearly didn’t like leaving Tuuri and Reynir unsupervised, and had promised to be back out as soon as he could.

Tuuri checked her watch. “He did say about fifteen minutes. It’s only been five.”

“How…” Reynir paused, as if embarrassed to ask the question, “… how dangerous is it out here? I mean, really?”

Tuuri gave him a sidelong glance. “About as dangerous as anywhere else in the silent world, I guess.” Reynir grimaced and patted the seal on his haz-mask, as if he was worried it might spontaneously break on him. “But I don’t think we need to be worried,” Tuuri continued, trying not to panic him too much. “It’s way too bright out here for any trolls or giants to be wandering around. The odd beast, maybe, but they shouldn’t be too much of a problem.”

Reynir frowned and looked out of the window, apparently deep in thought. A few quiet minutes passed, and then he spoke again.

“I spy, with my little eye, something beginning with…”

Tuuri groaned, her haz-mask’s air filters turning the noise into an asthmatic rasp. “Can we _please_ play something else?” she asked.

Reynir blinked and looked slightly hurt. “Umm, sure,” he muttered. “If you don’t like it, I guess...”

“It’s not that I don’t like it, it’s just that you’re- ” Tuuri stopped herself from saying _terrible at it_ at the last second. “You sort of have to know what things are before you can play that game.”

“I do know what things are!” Reynir protested a little hotly.

Tuuri raised her eyebrow and pointed out of the tank’s windscreen towards a dented metal pole rising out of the cracked pavement a few metres in front of them. The ragged remains of a lamp hung limply from its top. “You called that a stick a few minutes ago.”

“It is a stick! Just… metal, with some weird glass on the top.”

“ _It’s a lamppost!_ ” Tuuri cried, sounding more exasperated than perhaps she had intended. “I thought Iceland had electricity, and machinery and computers and I don’t know what else, and you’re telling me you’ve never seen a lamppost before!?”

Reynir looked slightly panicked at her outburst. “I’m sorry!” he cried, holding his hands up pleadingly. “We don’t have them on the farm! I just thought it’d be a good enough description…” he trailed off and turned to stare miserably out of the window next to him. “Sorry,” he murmured.

Tuuri instantly felt a little bit guilty. “No, no, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to shout. We can play I spy if you want to…”

Reynir turned back to her, a hopeful smile under his haz-mask. “You… you’re sure? You don’t mind?”

Tuuri desperately hoped her own smile didn’t look too much like the grimace it was trying to become. “Sure, go for it.”

“Great! I spy, with my little eye-”

He trailed off, his voice dying his throat.

“What? Go on, you spy what?” Tuuri asked, looking across at him. Reynir had gone the colour of snow, his freckles livid flecks on his paling face, his eyes bulging and locked straight ahead. Tuuri felt a little twinge of panic. “Reynir, are you ok?”

Reynir’s mouth moved but it was a good few seconds before he could force any words out.

“ _What is that?_ ” he squeaked, raising a trembling hand to point out of the window.

Tuuri whirled round in her seat, eyes wide, scanning the square for any signs of something amiss. Nothing. Grey cobblestones, grey tarmac, grey buildings, grey sky. She couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. She glared back at the young Icelander sat next to her. “Reynir, I don’t see anything,” she hissed. “If this is a joke…”

Something moved in her peripheral vision.

Her head snapped back round just in time to see _something_ come to a halt in the middle of the square, ducking behind one of the many cars that lay littered around the place. She was too late to see what it was. She squinted past the rain on the windscreen, trying to get a good look outside, silently cursing whichever one of the expedition’s organisers had decided to save a few kronur by buying a vehicle without functioning windscreen wipers.

“Is that a…?” Reynir started to whisper.

“ _Shh!_ ”

Whatever was out there moved again.

It was fast, faster than Tuuri thought anything could possibly move. She got the fleeting impression of a bulky grey body, a whirring mass of legs and arms propelling it from one pile of rubble to the next as it darted across the square. Within an instant it had disappeared behind another wrecked car and the plaza was still again.

Fear, hot and bright, started to churn in Tuuri’s chest.

“It’s a troll, isn’t it?” Reynir whimpered. “Oh, _gods_. I thought you said they couldn’t come out in the day?”

Tuuri didn’t answer him, didn’t have an answer to give. Her mind was racing. _It might be a beast. Or maybe even just an animal_ , she desperately tried to convince herself.

The creature broke from cover again, scuttling across the open ground towards the building. Tuuri could see it passing between rusted cars and broken lampposts, its twisted outline flickering from gap to gap between obstructions as it sped across the open ground. It reached the steps of the building began to climb them, slowing down as it did so, shifting its pace from a quick dash to a more tentative crawl. Finally, Tuuri got a decent view of it as it rose above the flaking rust of the abandoned cars.

It looked like some monstrous beetle, quite unlike the fleshy masses that Tuuri had seen in pictures and conjured up from Emil and Sigrun’s lurid descriptions. The troll’s body was grey and angular, its skin overwhelmed by growths of bone that had thrust up through its flesh and fused out across it. No wonder she hadn’t been able to see it earlier, Tuuri realised – stood still, that thing would have been perfectly camouflaged against the decaying urban ruins. It could have been hiding nearby for hours, waiting for its perfect moment to strike. She watched with mounting horror as it reached the top of the steps and began to sniff around the sagging wooden doors of the building like a dog that has caught a particularly interesting scent.

The scent, perhaps, of a four-course meal. _  
_

_I have to do something!_ Tuuri thought desperately to herself, _I have to warn them!_ But there was nothing she could do, no way of contacting the other four. No way, except…

Blindly, almost without thinking about it, she slammed her fist down on the steering wheel. The tank’s horn blared out across the plaza, loud and harsh, echoing and reverberating off of the surrounding walls.

The troll stopped dead, and turned around. Tuuri could almost see its head tilt inquisitively.

She brought her fist down again, and again, hammering the steering wheel as hard as she could as if it would somehow make the horn’s clamour louder, loud enough to reach into the building and warn the other four that they were in terrible danger. She raised her fist to hit it again but Reynir grabbed her arm and spun her round to face him, his face a mask of terror.

“What did you do that for?” he squeaked. “It knows we’re here now!”

Tuuri looked back across the square. The troll was making its way back down the steps, starting across towards the tank, picking up speed. In seconds it would be upon them.

“Reynir,” she said, trying and failing to keep the fear out of her voice, “I need you to go back and make sure the door’s locked.”

“What-?”

“The door, in the crew area.” She pointed backwards over her shoulder at where she remembered the door being, not daring to take her eyes of the troll as it galloped towards them, jinking between heaps of rubble and vaulting over the carcasses of cars. It was getting close enough that she could make out the details on its bony growths, see the smooth, ossified plates that had once been a face. “The one to the outside. I need you to check it’s locked.”

“But-”

“ _NOW!”_ she roared. “ _Go!_ ”

Reynir didn’t need telling again. He scrambled out of his seat and stumbled out of the tank’s cabin, nearly tripping over his own feet. The second he had cleared the hatch, Tuuri slammed the door behind him, swivelling the lock into place and sealing it tight. Reynir’s muffled voice filtered through a few seconds later.

“Um, Tuuri? The outer door’s locked – I think. But, ah, this door-” there was a knock behind her, she ignored it- “this door’s gotten locked as well.”

“I know,” Tuuri murmured. “I know.” _Gods I hope they heard me in there_ , she thought to herself. She reached down and pressed a panel underneath the steering wheel. It flopped open at her touch, disgorging old towels, sweet wrappers, an old A-Z of Copenhagen, the detritus of their expedition – and, nestled in amongst the stained paper and dust, a gleaming semi-automatic pistol that Sigrun had left there ‘for emergencies’. She scooped it up, checking the action with trembling hands, trying to remember the rudimentary training she’d been given back in Keuruu. Magazine in, slide forward, safety off. A small, detached part of her marvelled at how _heavy_ the thing was as it sat in her hand. She looked back up from the gun, sitting stock-still and not making a sound, watching the ragged shape come closer and closer towards her. Her breathing through her haz-mask became heavier and more forced as panic wrapped its iron bands around her chest.

The troll closed in.

It rounded a pile of collapsed brickwork that could once have been a chimney from one of the buildings that lined the side street and charged towards the tank. It was close enough for Tuuri to hear the hollow clatter of its bony claws on the stone ground and the heaving rasp of its breath. It got to within a few metres of the tank and then it _leapt_ , impossibly graceful, arcing through the air and down onto the tank’s hood with a massive crash. The tank rocked under the impact and Tuuri was almost thrown out of her seat. She heard a terrified yelp from behind her and desperately willed Reynir to keep his mouth shut.

On the other side of the glass the troll swivelled this way and that. It didn’t really have a head, Tuuri saw, just a jutting protrusion from its torso that was slightly less engulfed by the slabs and flakes of bone than the rest of it. The same detached part of her that had marvelled at the gun’s weight realised that it must be this bony carapace that was protecting the troll from the sun. Set deep in the thing’s skull, rotten black eyes dripped pus and twitched. The creature clearly didn’t know quite what to make of this strange metal beast, which had roared a challenge but was now sat still and quiet. It experimentally batted the windscreen with a claw and thrust its face up close, peering through into the cabin. _Can it see me?_ Tuuri wondered desperately. _Does it recognise what a human looks like anymore?_ Her finger, slick with sweat, tightened on the pistol’s trigger.

The troll made a noise like a bark and hauled itself up, over the windscreen and onto the tank’s roof. Tuuri watched its bulk pass by in front of her eyes and heard the thump-clatter of it moving around. From above her came the creak and shriek of metal being twisted and torn and for a terrible moment she thought the thing was tearing its way inside, ripping apart the roof as if the tank was just a can of food, before a piece of wreckage bounced down and she saw that it had merely decided to take a bite out of one of the headlamps. There were a few more clatters, a loud thump, and then silence.

Tuuri remained stock-still for a few more seconds, not daring to believe that the troll had left. She glanced over to the passenger-side mirror, trying to make out anything in the rain-speckled reflection it offered. Nothing there. She turned to look at the driver’s side one – and straight into the wreckage of a face.

Despite herself, she screamed and jerked backwards. The troll had jumped down from the tank’s roof and stood between the driver’s door and the brick wall of the street, pushing its armoured front up towards the driver’s window, mere inches away from where Tuuri sat. The armour around its eyes retreated to allow it a better look inside the tank, the plates of bone around its skull hinging back on tattered ligaments to reveal the festering meat beneath. The troll’s eyes shone, alive with appetite as it recognised prey in front of it. It slammed the window with a paw and a small crack appeared in the glass like a frozen spark. It leered in at Tuuri. She could almost see it realising with delight how close a meal was. It pulled its arm back, readying another blow to shatter the glass completely.

The remains of the troll’s face, all sagging jawbone and broken skin, briefly took on a very human expression of triumph.

And deep inside Tuuri, some small spark, some desperate survival instinct, took over.

With a cry that startled her as much as the troll she threw herself forwards, _towards_ the driver’s side door. She unlatched it as she crashed into it and her momentum hurled it open, slamming it into the troll’s bony hide. It was caught off balance and completely by surprise by this sudden counterattack. The door swept round and knocked the troll straight into the brickwork of the wall just behind it, dazing it and knocking the wind out of it. Tuuri lost her balance and collapsed out of the door, tumbling down over the tank’s front treads and landing in a heap next to the stunned troll.

The troll shrieked and tried to pull itself upright, tried to snap closed its bony armour to protect it from this sudden aggressor. But Tuuri was faster. As she slipped and scrabbled on the wet pavement to haul herself upright she levelled the pistol at the troll and, with adrenaline singing though her and her heart racing in mindless terror, she pulled the trigger for all she was worth.

The gun’s roar was deafening in the cramped confines of the alley. The first two shots went completely wide, smacking into the brick behind the troll and raising little clouds of dust from ragged holes. The third drilled through the troll’s chest and left a tattered bloom of blood and bone in its wake. The troll howled and shivered in pain, holding up its hands to try and protect itself from her. The fourth bullet grazed its face, slicing its mouth open as it slobbered and gasped. Blood leapt from a split artery in a crimson ribbon, spattering up the tank’s side like gory graffiti.

The fifth bullet found its mark, and the troll fell still and silent.

Suddenly, there was no sound but the gentle whisper of the rain. Tuuri slumped back against the tank, feeling sick to her stomach. _Don’t vomit_ , she commanded to herself. _Don’t vomit_. People who threw up in their haz-masks usually drowned in it. _Don’t_. She could feel the gorge rising in her throat, her body rebelling against what she had just seen and done – that, and the knowledge that she was practically swimming in infectious air. She heaved, fought it back down, clamped a hand over her mask as if that would help.

The next few moments passed in a whirl. Booted feet ran up to her, splashing through puddles that were beginning to stain red. Voices shouted, but she barely heard them. Strong hands gasped her by her shoulders and hefted her upright. She was shoved unceremoniously back into the driver’s seat of the tank and doors slammed behind her. To her right Sigrun’s face loomed, screaming at her over and over again.

“Drive! _Drive!_ For the gods' sakes, Tuuri, we need to get out of here! This is not the time for woolgathering! _Go!_ ”

Driving, she could do driving. She was good at that – or at least, the best out of the six of them. Almost on autopilot, she started the tank’s engine, threw it into gear and began reversing back down the side street they had come up from. Even as her higher reasoning seemed to shut down around her, as she almost passed out from a mixture of relief and residual panic, she executed a neat three-point turn at the end of the street and headed off the way they had come.

By the time a few blocks had gone by, she was starting to feel more herself. Her breathing gradually returned to normal and her mind no longer felt like it was made of treacle. She looked blearily across the cabin at Sigrun, who looked back at her with an unreadable expression on her face.

“When we get back to camp,” Sigrun started before Tuuri could get a word in, “you are going to undergo the most rigorous decontamination known to humanity. Mikkel says the odds of you getting the Illness are slim, but I don’t want to take a single chance. After all, you just took enough for the rest of this expedition put together.”

Tuuri started to protest weakly, but Sigrun cut her off.

“I’ll save the reprimand, and there _will_ be one, for later. Right now, I just want to say that I’m glad you made it. That, and…” A trace of her characteristic grin crept into her expression and she looked around herself theatrically. In a much lower voice, she continued. “If you breathe a word of this I will personally feed you to a giant. But… you handled your first troll a lot better than I handled mine.”

Tuuri boggled at her. Sigrun smiled, winked conspiratorially and affectionately ruffled Tuuri’s hair, taking care not to knock her haz-mask.

“There’s some Viking in you yet,” she grinned.

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: for those wondering what Sigrun’s first run-in with a troll might have been like, check out the excellent ‘A Pretty Good Sign of Potential’ (http://archiveofourown.org/works/3697685) by laufey. It’s what I based the idea off of, and well worth a read.


End file.
